Chronology of the Life of Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (A.D. 354-430)

Early Life

337  The death of the Emperor Constantine was followed by the division
of the Roman Empire into East and West. Constans, an orthodox Catholic,
ruled the West from 337 to 350. Constantius II, an Arian who disputed the
divinity of Christ, acquired the East. He became sole emperor in 350.

354  Born November 13 in Thagaste in the province of Numidia in
North Africa (today Souk Ahras in Algeria), Aurelius Augustinus was the
son of a pagan father, Patricius, and a Berber Christian mother, Monica.
The family, which included two brothers and a sister, was respectable but
somewhat impoverished.

354-365  The infancy and early schooling of Augustine. Determined
to secure a future for his intelligent son, Patricius made great financial
sacrifices to see that Augustine received a classical Latin education in
the local school. Augustine delighted in Latin literature, but he detested
the brutally enforced rote learning of arithmetic and Greek.

361  Following the death of Constantius II in 361, Julian the Apostate
ruled as emperor of Rome until 363, fostering the dominance of paganism
even though freedom of worship for all religions had been proclaimed by
Constantine in 313.

364  Valentinian I succeeded Julian as emperor in the West until
378. He reestablished toleration for Christian practice. He was the last
emperor to subscribe to Arianism.

366  Augustine's education continued at Madaura, a center of education
in Roman North Africa twenty miles south of Thagaste, where he was sent
to study rhetoric at age twelve. A formal command of rhetorical art, i.e.,
expressive, ornamented, and persuasive speech, was fundamental to any professional
career, such as law or public life, at the time.

370  Augustine had to return home for a year while Patricius saved
money for his further education. A year of idleness led the adolescent student
into acts of dissipation and sexual adventure, vividly recounted in Book
II of The Confessions.

371  Augustine left home again to study at Carthage, which he described
as "a cauldron of illicit loves." He frequented the theater and
kept company with a group of coarse friends whom he called "the wreckers."
Here he entered into a long-term relationship with a woman whom he came
to love dearly but whose name we do not know.

372  Augustine's unnamed lover bore him a son, Adeodatus, "God-given."
Augustine's father died, baptized a Christian on his deathbed. At the time
he merited from his son a cold contempt for his marital infidelity and for
failing to give Augustine the guidance and sense of self-discipline he needed
during his turbulent adolescence. It is clear, however, that Augustine's
extraordinary gift for affection and generosity in friendship was a legacy
from his sociable, open-handed father. At the conclusion of Book IX of The
Confessions, Augustine beseeches his readers that both his parents be
remembered in prayer with "devout affection."

At this time Augustine became a Manichaean "hearer." Manichaeism
was a pseudo-Christian sect developed in the third century A.D. by its founder,
Mani, who drew on elements of Babylonian, Judaic, and Christian sources.
It was a gnostic religious system based on a fundamental concept of the
duality of light and darkness. Goodness was thought to be manifested in
what belongs to the realm of light: knowledge, spirit, and soul. Evil, or
darkness, was viewed as connected to ignorance, matter, and the body. Redemption
was to be achieved through a special, intuitive knowledge and through moral
practices that included abstinence from meat, wine, and sex for those who
were fully initiated. Augustine was attracted to its dualistic concept of
human nature because it allowed him to evade accepting full responsibility
for his moral failures by taking refuge in the rational aspect of his beingthrough
a spurious detachment from the activities of his bodily self. He accepted
the Manichaean rejection of the Old Testament along with its highly critical
approach to the New Testament.

373  On reading Cicero's Hortensius, a strong desire for
true wisdom was awakened in Augustine. This dialogue on the necessity of
philosophical thinking inspired him to dedicate himself to the study of
philosophy. He abandoned his career as a lawyer in the imperial civil service,
a career planned for him by his father and by Romanianus, a wealthy patron
who had supported his studies. The Hortensius counseled against the
pursuit of sensual pleasure as inimical to the discipline of thought. However,
Augustine stayed with his lover and continued to be influenced by Manichaeism
for the next nine years. He began to question deeply the meaning of evil
and the power of sin.

Teaching Career

374  Augustine returned home to Thagaste to teach grammar, the
underlying foundation for the study of rhetoric. Monica, appalled at his
alliance with the heretical Manichees, at first refused to allow him to
enter her house. She prayed unceasingly for his conversion to the Catholic
Church.

376  Augustine returned to Carthage following the death of a dear
friend in Thagaste, which had made the associations of that city unbearable
to him. In Carthage he opened a school of rhetoric. The rowdiness and pranks
of the students made teaching extremely difficult and wore on his nerves.
He persisted, however, in this career for eight years.

379  Theodosius I became emperor of the Roman Empire and ruled
until 395. During this period, orthodox Christianity was established as
the official state religion and Arianism was suppressed. All subjects of
the Roman Empire were enjoined to accept the Nicene Creed, formulated at
the Council of Nicea in 325, which is still in use today to express Catholic
Trinitarian theology.

383  Augustine left for Rome to teach rhetoric after several good
friends, including Alypius, a former student of his, wrote urging him to
join them there and promising him serious students and better pay. He deceived
Monica about his departure so that she could not follow him. After suffering
a siege of illness upon arrival, Augustine then had to endure cheating students
who skipped out on him when it was time to pay their fees. But good fortune
came his way when Symmachus, prefect of the city, chose Augustine for a
post in Milan as professor of rhetoric.

Conversion

384  Augustine moved to Milan and took up study of the Neoplatonists,
especially Plotinus (A.D. 205-270), who had taught that one is awakened
to a sense of divine destiny through purification from carnal appetites.
He became increasingly disillusioned with Manichaean materialism and with
the New Academy skepticism about certitude that was fashionable at the time.
(This was a Greek school of thought that had its origin in pre-Socratic
philosophy; it insisted that no certainty about truth can ever be attained,
that there are only degrees of probability, and that all judgments are thereby
relative. Augustine would write Contra academicos in the fall of
387 to refute these ideas.) The basic Christian principles his mother had
taught him remained intact.

Augustine eventually decided to become a catechumen in the Catholic Church
of Milan after being impressed by the sermons of Bishop Ambrose, who showed
him how to appreciate the Bible in spiritual terms, and whose discourses
were mystical, with Neoplatonic concepts of the soul. Augustine recognized
clearly now that his carnal activity weakened his efforts at introspective
contemplation.

385  Monica arrived in Milan a year after Augustine and set about
arranging a marriage for him with a Catholic woman of an appropriate rank
and means to further his career. As a condition for the marriage, the woman's
family insisted that Augustine be separated from his concubine for at least
two years before the ceremony could take place. He had been faithful to
his lover for some fourteen years, and this separation was emotionally wrenching
for both of them. However, instead of accepting the period of celibacy,
Augustine soon after replaced her with another woman to satisfy his needs.
By now, Augustine's carnal appetites were in deep conflict with his spiritual
desire to seek metaphysical truth.

386  In late summer, Augustine and his companion Alypius entertained
a visitor, Ponticianus, who spoke to them about St. Anthony and the desert
monks of Egypt who had left all they had in the world to devote themselves
to lives of asceticism and prayer. Augustine began to feel his heart burn
in his breast with the power that the call to a life of renunciation was
exerting on him. He repaired to the garden of the house, where he wrestled
with the demands of his flesh and wept with great, tormented sobs over his
inability to accept the challenge of continence.

Hearing an unseen child say, "Pick up and read. Pick up and read,"
Augustine opened the book of St. Paul, which he had been studying, to Romans
13, where he read: "Not in riots and drunken parties, not in eroticism
and indecencies, not in strife and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ
and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts."

At this moment, confidence and peace flooded into his heart and dispelled
the anguish that had overwhelmed him in the garden. Paul's question, "Who
will free me from this body of death?" became Augustine's question.
Paul's answer, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
became precisely the truth he had long sought. Augustine reported all this
to his mother, who rejoiced in God for His answer to her lifelong prayer
for her son.

387  That summer Augustine, Monica, and their fellow companions
had to remain in the port of Ostia while the harbors of Rome were blockaded
by an ongoing civil war. Here Augustine and his mother, standing together
as they looked out into a garden, shared a mystical vision as they talked
about the utter silence in which God may be heard once the clamor of the
flesh, the appeals of the world, and even the sounds of the heavens and
soul are stilled.

A few days later, Monica fell ill with a fever and died, age fifty-six,
leaving Augustine resigned to, though deeply aggrieved over, her death.

Book IX of The Confessions ends here with the description of his
mother's death and Augustine's prayer for both Monica and his father, Patricius.
It brings to a close Augustine's account of his purgation from sin, the
illumination of his conversion and baptism, and the complete surrender of
himself in unity with God. In Book X, Augustine gives an account of his
state of mind at the time when he was composing The Confessions.
Books XI-XIII set forth his own theological position on Creation, time and
eternity, and the destiny of man to know himself and to know God.

388  Augustine remained for about a year in Rome, where he investigated
several monastic communities. He then returned to Thagaste in Africa with
Alypius and Adeodatus, settled his property, established his own monastic
community, and began to live a contemplative life as a lay "servant
of God."

390  Augustine's tranquil life of prayer and study in community
was soon shattered by the death of his gifted son, Adeodatus, at age seventeen,
and of another dear friend, Nebridius.

Bishop of Hippo

391  Grief made Augustine restless, and he visited Hippo to see
about setting up another monastery there. While at Mass one day, when Bishop
Valerius was describing the urgent needs of the Catholic minority, besieged
and persecuted by heretical sects, the congregation turned to Augustine
and importuned him to accept ordination. He was made a priest on the spot.
Augustine remained in Hippo for the rest of his life.

393  In December, the General Council of Hippo met, providing an
occasion for the assembly of Catholic bishops to see and hear Augustine.
The subject about which he spoke to them clearly and eloquently was "On
the Faith and the Creed." It was highly unusual for an ordinary priest
to preach to bishops in this manner.

During this period and through A.D. 405, Augustine wrote against the
Manichaean heresy, which he now completely repudiated.

394  For the next eight years, Augustine would combat the errors
of the Donatist heresy, a schismatic group that considered itself the "pure"
Church and insisted on rigorously observing ritual actions to the point
of fanaticism. The Donatists turned away from the world to face inwardly
toward their own static community, made up of an elite that vigorously and
violently persecuted nonmembers. Augustine held that the Church must, on
the contrary, be coextensive with society and function as a leaven in the
world.

395  Augustine was ordained coadjutor (assistant) bishop of Hippo.
In less than two years he would be made bishop. During his episcopate, he
drove out of Hippo the Donatists and other heretical Christian rivals. He
led the community like a father heads a family, adjudicating disputes, intervening
for prisoners to save them from torture and execution, advocating for the
poor, buying freedom for badly treated slaves, and charging religious women
with the care of abandoned and orphaned children. He preached abundantly
and wrote On Christian Doctrine. By 410 Augustine had written thirty-three
books.

395  Arcadius became emperor in the Roman East until 408.

395  Honorius, a devout Catholic, became emperor in the West until
423. He granted legal recognition to the orthodox Catholic Church in Africa.
This gave Augustine political power in his struggle with the Donatists.

396  Bishop Valerius died and Augustine succeeded him as bishop
of Hippo. He remained in this office until his own death in 430.

397  Augustine began to write The Confessions, which were
completed in 400 or 401. This work expresses three main concerns. One is
Augustine's frank and detailed acknowledgment of his personal sinfulness
and the power he came to recognize as God's provident graceprotective,
creative, salvificin every moment of his life. He also wrote in order
to confess his own Christian faith and to clearly repudiate any supposed
lingering connections on his part with Manichaeism. Finally, The Confessions
are a heartfelt paean of praise and thanksgiving in honor of God's glory.

This extraordinary document is a formidable act of memory by which Augustine
reveals, vividly and specifically, the personal deeds, events, men and women,
and ideas that formed the texture of his life. The Confessions are written
as a long prayer addressed directly to God and are an exercise in scrupulous
honesty and candor. The theme is stated in the opening paragraph: "You
have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."

399  For twenty years Augustine labored over On the Trinity,
his most profound theological treatise. In it he exposed the errors of the
Manichaeans, Donatists, Pelagians, and Arians. It included exegetical works
and commentaries on scripture.

408  The eastern German Visigoths crossed over the borders of the
Roman Empire seeking refuge from the Huns and looting Roman cities as they
came. Rome was besieged twice during this time and the citizens starved
into acts of cannibalism. In the year 410, on August 24, the Gothic army
general Alaric and his men sacked Rome, burning parts of the city.

410  Pelagius, a British monk, had taught an austere and reformed
ideal of the Christian church for about ten years in Rome. He had gathered
a small but devoted group of followers when Alaric's army forced him to
flee to Africa. The battle against the Donatist heresy, which Augustine
had fought vigorously for years, would be succeeded by his controversies
with Pelagianism. Contrary to Augustine, Pelagius taught that human beings
achieve salvation through personal acts of will by which they take total
responsibility for their actions. He denied the doctrine of original sin,
which held that the human will was weakened by sin and in need of divine
assistance. With no concession in his system for "amazing grace,"
Pelagius placed on each individual the burden of and blame for every sin
as a fully deliberate act. A person can be saved if he or she makes up his
or her mind to live a correct, moral life by exercising self-control. One
must choose the good and reject what is evil. One is born free to make one's
choices as one will. Jesus is more model than savior in the view of Pelagius.

Augustine accepted a fallen, flawed human nature, helpless in sin without
the intervention of Gods provident and salvific grace. His compassionate
tolerance for the weakness of human nature contrasted sharply with the Pelagian
stoic puritanism which allowed no excuse for personal sin. For Augustine,
true freedom is achieved only through a long process by which the individual's
knowledge and will are healed by grace. Pelagius ultimately moved onto the
Holy Land without ever meeting Augustine face-to-face. The bishop of Hippo
fought with Pelagius on the basis of his written works.

412  An imperial decree was issued from Rome banning the Donatist
church.

413  For the next thirteen years, until 426, Augustine worked on
his masterpiece, The City of God, a summation of his Christian philosophy
of history, occasioned by Alaric's sack of Rome. In its wake the charge
had come from all corners of the empire that this tragic event was the result
of the forsaking of old pagan deities in favor of the Christian religion.
Augustine refuted this charge by citing the fall of Troy, "the parent
of Rome," which had been faithful to all its gods.

Augustine, instead, viewed the immense suffering caused by the invasion
as a necessary discipline, or remediation, of human society. Envy, rpide,
and the lust to dominate lead to the misery of the human race and are tendencies
present in every human heart. But in disasters, souls are sifted by what
they endure. Those who are evil blaspheme against God, while those who are
humble and pious revere Him. However, both good and evil persons are similarly
taught that the goods of this world, all gifts from God but liable to misuse,
are temporary and will pass away. True and lasting riches are to be found
only in God's kingdom. The rewards of heaven will eclipse with their splendor
all the brilliance of Creation as we know it now.

415  The synod at Diospolis in Palestine pronounced the writings
of Pelagius to be orthodox.

417  The teachings of Pelagius were condemned in Italy. He and
all of his supporters were forbidden to remain in Rome.

418  The Council of Carthage, with over two hundred bishops under
Augustine's leadership, pronounced Pelagianism heretical.

Final Years

423  Valentinian III became emperor in the West. He ruled until
455.

426  On September 26, Augustine nominated Eraclius to be his successor.

429  Vandals, who were Arian Christians led by Genseric, invaded
Africa from Spain.

430  The North African coastal provinces of Mauretania and Numidia
were ravaged by Vandals, who raped, tortured, and pillaged, burning Catholic
churches along the way. Catholic bishops and refugees fled to Hippo, which
was a fortified city.

On August 28, Augustine died after suffering a fever for several days.
He had prayed with his frightened flock for the gift of perseverance in
the faith by which the weak individual can come to share in the eternal
stability of Christ. Bound as a father to his family, the bishop of Hippo
stood firm until the end while all his world and life's work were destroyed
in the violence around him. Though Hippo was partly burned, the library
of Augustine was preserved from destruction. It contained much of what he
felt and believed and has been handed down to us as our priceless inheritance.
It comprised some 100 books, 240 letters, and more than 500 sermons.